An intimate meditation on love and loss from the acclaimed non-conformist photographer, featuring portraits of luminaries such as Vivienne Westwood
Throughout his 35-year career, Juergen Teller has been renowned for his non-conformist style, defying expectations with a unique combination of seriousness and self-irony, creating authentic narratives from his insatiable curiosity for life and the endlessly surprising world around him. i need to live, accompanying Teller’s major solo exhibition at the Grand Palais Éphémère, Paris, in 2023–24 and the Triennale Milano in 2024, captures the depth of his unmatched photographic achievement. Storytelling has always been integral to Teller’s practice, realized through the unconventional merging of his personal experience and commercial work in a range of genres: from portraiture and landscapes, to nudes, still lifes and the ever-changing self-portrait. This book embodies Teller’s interest in the unpredictable circle of life and a desire to explore his self and his familial relationships with a new poignancy — reflecting on the loss of close collaborators and friends including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and gallerist Suzanne Tarasieve, while celebrating the arrival of his third child and the fruitful creative relationship with his wife and muse, Dovile Drizyte.
You have good experiences, bad experiences, funny experiences. Life is full of complexity, and I wanted to show that. - Juergen Teller
About the Author:
Juergen Teller, born in Erlangen in 1964, studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich. His work has been published in influential magazines such as Vogue, System, i-D, POP and Arena Homme+, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions including those at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Teller won the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2003, and from 2014 to 2019 held a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg. His books with Steidl include Louis XV (2005), Marc Jacobs Advertising, 1998–2009 (2009), Siegerflieger (2015), Handbags (2019), Leben und Tod (2020), William Eggleston 414 (2020), Auguri (2022), The Master V (2023) and Notes About My Work (2023).